I originally posted this on Facebook, but for what should be obvious reasons, I think it’s worth reposting here.

John Gruber, today: Bing Censors Image Search for ‘Tank Man’, Even in U.S.

Interesting that Gruber mentions 1984‘s “memory holes” here. I think I’ve been affected by 1984 more than any other book I’ve read, and I re-read it at least once a decade.

Something I didn’t grasp when I read it back in high school: the long-term effects of the memory hole. I distinctly remember Tiananmen Square in 1989. I remember where I was when the news came on — my maternal grandparents’ house. You can “memory hole” something like that without ever erasing it from my memory, or countless others of us who experienced it first-hand.

But what of later generations? What do my kids know of events like this? And if actions are being taken to restrict access to information about events that people don’t remember first-hand, eventually it might as well have never happened. It’s been successfully memory-holed.

Please place this in your mind beside the link I shared yesterday, about bills being considered in many states (including Wisconsin) that will make it illegal to teach critical race theory. When I read that yesterday I thought about another element of 1984: Newspeak. The government was systematically re-engineering the English language to remove words it deemed problematic. As in, the kinds that could undermine its absolute authority.

The only thing Orwell got wrong was the year.